Sunday

I just took a bunch of kids to an LTC conference on Christian arts and communication. There, we saw a variety of arts from drama and puppetry to chorus and visual arts. While judging the drama division, I saw some strong, vibrant dramas, and some that were weaker. Many adults involved in this type of writing may be doing it without the benefit of tips or a mentor to help them through the process. So, for what it's worth, here are my suggestions from my years of training and work as a professional novelist and playwright.

TEN TIPS TO WRITE A GOOD CHRISTIAN DRAMA OR SKIT for LTC or other events:

1) Understand
the difference between a drama and a
sermon/lesson. Sermons and
lessons are wonderful in their own right, but they do not make good drama. The
closer your skit becomes to a sermon or lesson in its style and content, the
less effective it will be.

2) Avoid
too much direct discussion of scripture or writing a ‘teaching’ scenario such as
a parent teaching children or actors portraying "a Bible class." This is usually a sign that your
material is sermon or lesson-like; instead, tell a STORY with strong
characters.

3) Pick
a creative setting and unusual characters. Skits set in schools and
churches tend to produce sermon-like material. It’s harder to write sermons set
in outer space! That’s not to say that all skits
must be wacky, but it’s much more interesting to set a skit at the police
station or sewage plant than at church. Another overused scenario is the “radio
or TV interview.” It’s really hard to make the interview style fresh and
exciting. If you must pick one of the overused, everyday settings, use unusual,
memorable characters, not just “an ordinary kid or teenager.”

4) Base
your skit on one major problem and conflict. Conflict drives all good drama
from beginning to end. Not all conflict must involve characters battling one
another. Sometimes, the main conflict may be a character’s internal conflict (“should
I or shouldn’t I?”). Characters don’t have to argue directly or fight, but instead
they may have strikingly different goals that place them in conflict. For
example, one character on stage may be desperately trying to make a new friend,
while the other character on stage really has to go to the ladies’ room and has
no interest in small talk! Such minor conflicts can make some of the funniest
and most poignant drama. If there is no conflict but only talk and explanation,
the skit will be deadly dull.

5) Help your actors by writing strong characters with intense motivations. Strong
characters have strong goals. They also have quirks and overriding personality
traits that make them recognizable within the space of a short scene. At the
same time, you don’t want them to be so stereotypical that they are boring (such as the
jock, the nerd, the vain girl).If you
do use very common types, make sure their goals make them more
memorable. A jock making vague macho statements is less interesting than a jock
so driven to win the state championship that he’ll take steroids or sabotage
his rival teammate. The nerd is dull if he’s just a kid in a pair of black
eyeglasses. He is much more appealing if his goal is to outwit the school
bullies and he actually says smart or witty things about history or chemistry.

6) Use
humor. Make a choice about whether your skit is all-out comedy or more
serious drama (perhaps with a sprinkling of humor). Do not choose the
non-existent genre: “this is a sincere and earnest skit.” Aspire higher. Your
goal may be to write a skit that is moving, troubling, or hilarious, but if
your goal is “a nice, earnest skit about spiritual matters” you are probably
treading dangerously close to boring. Humor is the easiest way for amateur
young actors to do well onstage. They feel more comfortable and they usually
enjoy it. For high school performers, a serious drama may be possible, but the lead actors will need
to be experienced and talented to make it work. The goal for the skit should be to get the
audience to laugh loudly (not forced polite laughter) or be truly moved
emotionally at some point during the skit. If neither of these things happens,
it’s a sign that the skit may be ineffective, or in a word...boring.

7. Include
music/sound effects. Music and sound on a portable boombox are a simple,
inexpensive way to produce a much richer theatrical effect. If your skit needs
gunshots, download sound effects from an online music store. The internet has
made sound design much easier. If the students are enthusiastic singers, don’t
be afraid to use their abilities. If not, consider using background music to
enhance mood.

8. Costumes
matter: write characters that allow fun costumes. Costumes matter to the
audience, and more importantly, they help inexperienced performers have more
fun and loosen up onstage. Do not choose everyday clothing as your costume, or
even worse, event t-shirts. You will
lose one of the most powerful tools to help your student actors enjoy their
show.

9. Write
a variety of big and small parts. Don’t listen to any voices telling you
that everyone must have an equal part. Drama doesn’t work like this in any
other setting, and there’s no reason why it should at church. Some kids simply
don’t yet know how to project their voices and make themselves heard. Other young actors start out very wooden and unemotional. Allow these less experienced actors time
to grow by giving them fewer lines. Try to make their small parts into especially
fun and animated roles.

10. Take
the assigned theme seriously and make it central through a story, not sermonizing.
If your skit will appear at a venue with a required theme, make sure the theme
is central and clear in the STORY of your work. This is not the same as having
a bunch of characters talk about the theme at length…that is a sermon. Instead,
figure out what kind of story will *show* the theme without specifically saying
it out loud. Then, if one of your characters does openly state the theme, keep
it to a minimum. Audiences prefer to be respected and allowed to see the theme
for themselves.

Bonus tip: Keeping all of these
tips in mind can be a tall order for a first-time playwright. One good way to
help yourself get started is to pick a classic story—a fairytale, a well-known
movie, or a classic novel—and imitate the structure and conflict of this
classic story. For example, how could “The Three Little Pigs” become a story
about forgiveness? What could “Little Red Riding Hood” show us about
temptation? But don’t just use famous characters to create chaos: for example,
slapping Captain Kirk and Spock into a skit won’t necessarily make it good, unless
the skit also has a strong central problem and conflict that ties into the
theme. The most common problem with skit parodies of famous works is that the writer gets so caught up in the humor and characters
that the storyline becomes unfocused and hard to follow. Keep that central problem/conflict
very clear.

What is it? Some say it's an entire sentence, and it can't be expressed without a sentence, such as:

Revenge leads to self-destruction.

Screenwriting guru Stanley Williams has a more complex formula for theme that he dubs "the moral premise" in his book by that title. To him, no narrative is complete without its moral premise, and the moral premise is like a theme with two parts:

Vice or undesirable quality leads to _____________________
but virtue or desirable quality leads to ___________________.

Simple as it sounds, it does allow an author to construct highly unified themes.

I wish more genre novels emphasized theme. Many genre novels have strong plots, but the theme just doesn't come together. There's not a lot of symbol, resonance, or imagery to make the novel vibrate on a deeper level.

By contrast, in many contemporary literary novels, there's a ton of theme, and no plot to hang it on. This is a departure from many classic novels now considered 'literary', which were more balanced in plot and theme, especially before 1900.

A novel's theme works like the moment of personal epiphany we experience when we look back on past events and suddenly spot a theme in our own life's narrative. But in order for theme to work in novels the way it works in our consciousness, there has to be some forward motion, some action to distract us from the theme while it's accumulating, and then BOOM! At the end, we get the big reveal.

Monday

If you're familiar with the usual steps of the traditional publishing process, you know that novels go through several rounds of edits, and then they are typeset into galleys.

Galleys look like the actual pages that will appear in a bound novel. When you get the author copies of the galleys, you have your last chance to proofread your novel and make minor changes before it goes to print.

My second novel, Sweeter than Birdsong, ended up needing a very quick turnaround in line edits (the stage right before galleys), an unusually grueling, fast turnaround for both me and my editor. As a result, the galleys were not as clean as I would have liked. There were some errors, and there were a number of stylistic things that needed to be cleaned up. This was only natural because of the time pressure, and I managed to get everything shipshape for publication by some judicious work with the galleys (and with the help of my excellent copy editor and proofreaders).

Still, in an ideal situation, I would like to produce much cleaner galleys, and I did that for my third novel, Lovelier than Daylight.

Why does it matter? Because galleys turn into what are called the ARCs, or Advance Reader Copies.

I was chagrined to realize that the readers for my second novel's blog tour had received ARCs, because I did not want my dear readers to read the flawed copies made from my galleys. I wanted them to read the real thing, the cleaned up version! But that's the way it often works in publishing. Reviews, both formal and informal, require advance copies.

So, when it's your turn, keep in mind that your galleys will go to Publishers Weekly. They will go to Library Journal and RT Book Reviews and every other advance reviewer.

My advice: get your manuscript as close to perfect as you can during line edits. Sometimes, circumstances will really make that close to impossible, as with our editing time frame for Sweeter than Birdsong. But when you have the time, go over your manuscript with a fine-toothed comb during line edits! Get rid of every word repetition, every slightly cloudy phrasing, every metaphor that has even a *whisper* of overwriting about it.

You'll be glad you did when you find out a hundred reviewers are reading your galleys. :-)

Sunday

Before my last interstate move, I was ruthless about weeding books from my collection. I gave away everything that I would be able to find at a public library, including most of my classic works of literature. I've never missed them. As long as I can get them at a library, all is good.

Here's my problem with this move: I still have the books I couldn't stand to give up in my last move: the landmark scholarly works I used for my dissertation that I can't get outside of a university library. In addition to these, I have a ton of books that I acquired for my historical novel research. These books also cannot be found in most libraries: the only way you get them outside of academia is to buy them. There's no way I'm letting them go.

I own a number of books about faith, and living out one's faith in various ways. These need to stay in my home as references. Then there are the gargantuan works like my beautiful, deluxe edition of the Odyssey, my Collected Works of Shakespeare, or my excellent book of New York TimesFront Pages collected from over one hundred years, a phenomenally good gift from my sister-in-law Laura. Each of these books probably weighs five to ten pounds!

So here I am in the age of the e-book, about to move hundreds of pounds of paper books to my new home.

It's that time again: the edits for Lovelier than Daylight are due soon, and that's why I have been pretty quiet for the last couple of weeks. The suggestions from my editors are great, as usual, and will enrich the story.

I really appreciate your visits here and your comments--I always enjoy reading them and you are all in my thoughts more than you may realize. Please bear with me once more--I'll be back soon. :-)

Wednesday

What a great Facebook party we had last night for Sweeter than Birdsong! I loved talking to my readers--you are all so kind and you ask great questions.

This is the cover for my third novel, Lovelier than Daylight, which will release this November. We revealed it at the party for the first time in public. I love it...when you read the novel, you'll see this cover is just perfect for the story, in addition to being beautiful.

So without further ado, here are the winners of the party giveaways! Trivia answers posted at the end.

Congratulations to Wendy Newcomb! You've won a copy of Sweeter Than Birdsong!

Congratulations to Stephanie Ford Skinner! You've won a copy of Sweeter Than Birdsong!

Congratulations to Jessica Carlson Mocny! You've won a copy of Sweeter Than Birdsong and the gift certificate of your choice (Amazon, iTunes, Starbucks)! Email your mailing address and choice to amy {at} litfusegroup.com!

Congratulations to Libbi Hartwig! You've won a copy of Sweeter Than Birdsong!

Congratulations to Jan Bouchard-Kerr! You've won a copy of Sweeter Than Birdsong!

Congratulations to Audrey Elizabeth! You've won a copy of Sweeter Than Birdsong and the gift certificate of your choice (Amazon, iTunes, Starbucks)! Email your mailing address and choice to amy {at} litfusegroup.com!

Congratulations to Hannah Wilson! You've won a copy of Sweeter Than Birdsong!

Congratulations to Jenna Zeidler! You've won a copy of Sweeter Than Birdsong!

Congratulations to Jennifer Stevensen Tipton! You've won a copy of Sweeter Than Birdsong and the gift certificate of your choice (Amazon, iTunes, Starbucks)! Email your mailing address and choice to amy {at} litfusegroup.com!

Congrats to Kimberlee Patton! You won the book club prize pack! Email your mailing address to amy {at} litfusegroup.com and let her know when you'd like to schedule your live chat with Rosslyn!
Super Trivia Winner:

Congrats to Renn Shearin! You won the Downton Abbey Prize Pack! Email your mailing address to amy {at} litfusegroup.com!
And here is the iPod Nano Winner:

Congrats to Sabine Galvin from California! You are the winner of the iPod Nano in the color of your choice and both books in The Saddler's Legacy series! Send your mailing address to amy {at} litfusegroup.com and we'll get right out to you!

1 What first name was shared by both the most famous African-American woman to work on the Underground Railroad and the most famous white woman to write a novel opposing slavery?
Harriet
2 What religious group was the first in America to fully condemn slavery and was later renowned for their work on the Underground Railroad?
Quakers
3 Sweeter than Birdsong begins in 1855. How many years later would the Civil War break out?
Six years later, in 1861
4 Who was the most famous songwriter in America in 1855?
Stephen Foster
5 What was the most popular ladies’ magazine in 1855?
Godey's

Questions about the author:

1 Name one of my two favorite animals.
Horse or dog
2 In what major city did I work after I finished undergrad work?
New York City
3 Where did I go for graduate school?
Emory University
4 In how many foreign countries did I live before graduating from high school?
Two
5 Which book by Dickens is on my “Books I Love” list?
Oliver Twist

Trivia questions about the book

1 What is the name of Kate Winter’s horse?
Garnet
2 Who is the real African-American hero who works on the Underground Railroad in Sweeter than Birdsong?
John Parker
3 To what city does Ruth Winter take her daughter near the end of the novel?
Philadelphia

I write inspirational historical novels of adventure, suspense and love. My first novel, Fairer than Morning, won two 2012 Carol Awards and was named as one of Lifeway Fiction's Ten Favorite Reads of 2011. I have worked as a professional playwright and won awards for poetry. (photo by Amy Parish Photography)